Closing The Sale: You Don’t Have to be a Tough Guy
by Marilee Crocker /This is the second of two parts on sales effectiveness
There’s often talk among salespeople, including travel professionals, about how best to “close the sale.”
But most salespeople don’t know what closing is, or how to do it well, according to sales expert John Parke.
Closing the sale doesn’t have to mean pushing a customer to make a decision right now. Nor does it have to feel difficult or weird, said Parke, president and CEO of the consulting firm Leadership Synergies and a former vice president of Marriott International’s global account sales organization.
To close sales effectively, travel sellers simply need to master what Parke calls the “go-forward.”
Needs & solutions
Parke views closing the sale as one of three stages in the sales process.
The first stage involves understanding what the customer wants. “It’s the act of asking the right questions in the right order to get the most amount of information in the shortest period of time,” Parke said.
The second or middle stage involves solutions.
“If you just listen, the customer will tell you what’s important to them, and you just repeat it back to them: ‘I heard you say that these three things are important. Here’s how I will meet those needs.’”
Showing the way
Finally, there’s the close. When the first two stages are done well, this is an easy next step, Parke suggested.
“If through the discovery you’ve found out the person has a need, and you have a solution, then closing doesn’t have to be dirty. All you’re really doing is confirming.”
You do have to ask for the business, which means letting the customer know you want to work with them.
And you do have to overcome objections. But more than anything travel sellers need to make it a practice to give customers a vision of what to expect.
“Say something like, ‘If you select us, let me give you an idea of what the next 30 or 45 days is going to look like.’ By doing that you basically are painting a picture of how this relationship is going to unfold and what they’re going to get.
“The more you paint it, the more they see that go-forward, the more they’re likely to want to work with you,” Parke said.
Falling in love
It’s like saying, “This relationship is going to blossom, and this is what blossoming is going to look like.”
Along the way, the customer begins to feel, “I like you; you know what you’re doing and you’re going to make it easy on me.” It’s like falling in love, Parke said.
“We’re in the experience business. So if you’re explaining that this is what the experience will look like going forward, then the customer gets caught up in the experience,” he said.
“The experience is begun, in effect, before the contract is signed.”
Make it tough to leave
Once you’ve landed a new customer, you want to encourage them to continue doing business with you by making it tough for them to go elsewhere.
Cellphone companies have made an art of this by building in what are known as “switching costs” via those two-year contracts that make it costly for customers to change wireless providers.
“What people need to think about is how do you build in switching costs so the customer would hesitate to ever leave that relationship because it would come with consequences,” Parke said.
Show your value
Do this by “gently and professionally reminding the customer that they’re getting a lot of value above and beyond what they’re paying,” Parke advised.
Remind the customer that you’ll deliver their once-in-a-lifetime vacation without a hitch.
“You’re building equity value, so when the customer says, ‘But you’re $10 more than the competitor,’ it’s like they’re already thinking, ‘but you’re worth it,’ without your having to say it.”
Doing so will give you an edge in the marketplace that is hard to beat.
“When two viable businesses are competing for your business, the ones that show you the go-forward and that demonstrate, ‘I will be the caretaker of your experience; I’ll make sure your experience happens the way you envision it,’ those are the ones that win.”
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